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A Sundance favorite! This engaging documentary portrays the incredible life of Dr. Ruth Westheimer, a Holocaust survivor who became America’s most famous sex therapist. As her 90th birthday approaches, Dr. Ruth revisits her painful past and her career at the forefront of the sexual revolution. Mature audience only due to sexually explicit language (it’s Dr. Ruth, after all!). Psychologist and therapist Michael Kollar, EDD will provide additional insight after the screening.

Charleston YAD (Young Adult Division) and the Charleston JCC WOW Bookfest will be co-hosting YAD’s inaugural book club event! We will be reading Home in the Morning by Mary Glickman, and…. Mary lives locally and will be joining us to discuss her book!

Mary Glickman is the author of four novels, Home in the Morning, National Jewish Book Awards Finalist in Fiction’s One More River, Marching to Zion, and An Undisturbed Peace, listed by Southern Living as a best novel of 2016.

Some goodies will be provided, coffee/drinks for purchase.

Make sure to get started on reading the book! It is only $1.99 via Kindle, $16.99 paperback and there are options for used books as well $4-8. See synopsis of the book below.

Synopsis of Home in the Morning:
Jackson Sassaport is a man who often finds himself in the middle. Whether torn between Stella, his beloved and opinionated Yankee wife, and Katherine Marie, the African American girl who first stole his teenage heart; or between standing up for his beliefs and acquiescing to his prominent Jewish family’s imperative to not stand out in the segregated South, Jackson learns to balance the secrets and deceptions of those around him. But one fateful night in 1960 will make the man in the middle reconsider his obligations to propriety and family, and will start a chain of events that will change his life and the lives of those around him forever.

Home in the Morning follows Jackson’s journey from his childhood as a coddled son of the Old South to his struggle as a young man eager to find his place in the civil rights movement while protecting his family. Flashing back between Jackson’s adult life as a successful lawyer and his youth, Mary Glickman’s riveting novel traces the ways that race and prejudice, family and love intertwine to shape our lives.

Judy Goldman’s book, TOGETHER: A MEMOIR OF A MARRIAGE AND A MEDICAL MISHAP, she describes how her husband had an epidural (a routine medical procedure) to relieve his back pain. Something went terribly wrong, and he was instantly paralyzed from the waist down. That’s the starting point for this memoir, which explores the changes we all face — the slow, ordinary ones and the sudden, dramatic ones. How do we adjust? This is the story of the life we dream of and the life we make.

A routine procedure left novelist, memoirist, and poet Judy Goldman’s husband paralyzed. Together is her unforgettable account of the struggle to regain their normal life and a nuanced portrait of a marriage tested.

When Judy Goldman’s husband of almost four decades reads a newspaper ad for an injection to alleviate back pain, an outpatient procedure sounds like the answer to his longtime backaches. But rather than restoring his tennis game, the procedure leaves him paralyzed from the waist down – a phenomenon none of the doctors the family consults can explain. Overnight, Goldman’s world is turned upside down. Though she has always thought of herself as the polite, demure wife opposite her strong, brave husband, Goldman finds herself thrown into a new role as his advocate, navigating byzantine hospital policies, demanding and refusing treatments, seeking solutions to help him win back his independence.

Along the way, Goldman flashes back to her memories of their life together. As she tries envision her family’s future, she discovers a new, more resilient version of herself. Together is a story of the life we imagine versus the life we lead-an elegant and empathetic meditation on partnership, aging, and, of course, love.

What happens when things get serious between a couple when one partner is Jewish and one is not? This book is for them-for interfaith couples who are dating, engaged, newly married, already established and for their families. It will enable them to navigate the complexities of an interfaith relationship and create a relationship rich in respect, understanding and a life grounded in Jewish identity. In One Couple/Two Religions, Dr. Marion Usher, creator of Love and Religion: An Interfaith Workshop for Jews and Their Partners, draws on her experience working with 700 interfaith couples over 25 years. It follows the struggle and success of couples who have made the journey and is a book about inclusion.

The story of one brave father’s determination to bring his daughter’s murderers to justice through the American justice system. Stephen M. Flatow says he was “just a real estate lawyer in New Jersey” until April 9, 1995. Flatow’s life changed that day when he learned his daughter Alisa, a twenty-year-old college student traveling in Israel, had been the victim of a terrorist bus-bombing. After he discovered the Iranian government had directly sponsored the bomber, Flatow decided to sue the terror state.

The oldest daughter of revered composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein offers a rare look at her father on the centennial of his birth in a deeply intimate and broadly evocative memoir. Bernstein mines the emotional depths of her childhood and invites us into her family’s private world. A fantastic set of characters populates the Bernsteins’ lives, including: the Kennedys, Mike Nichols, John Lennon, Richard Avedon, Stephen Sondheim, Jerome Robbins, and Betty (Lauren) Bacall. An intoxicating tale and an intimate meditation on a complex and sometimes troubled man, the family he raised, and the music he composed that became the soundtrack to their entwined lives.

For more information, contact Marylyn Haspel, Bookfest Director, at marylynh@charlestonjcc.org or 843-580-8564

What do Eleanor Roosevelt, Golda Meir and Wonder Woman have in common? American author, lecturer and poet Danny Siegel will tell you when he discusses “Mitzvah Heroines, Past and Present”.

Danny Siegel is an American author, lecturer, and poet who has spoken in more than 500 North American communities, to communal organizations, synagogues, JCC’s, Federations, on Tzedakah and Jewish values.

Often referred to as “The World’s Greatest Expert on Microphilanthropy”, “The Feeling Person’s Thinker”, and “The Pied Piper of Tzedakah”, and most recently as “A Pioneer Of Tzedakah” by the New York Jewish Week editor and publisher, he is one of three recipients of the prestigious 1993 Covenant Award for Exceptional Jewish Educators.

The JCC Filmfest, College of Charleston Jewish Studies Program, and Charleston Jewish Federation’s REMEMBER Program for Holocaust and Genocide Awareness proudly present a screening of “MY DEAR CHILDREN.” Nearly 100 years ago, Feiga Shamis sent her two young children to an orphanage a continent away. Twenty years later, she hand-wrote a 174-page letter to her children explaining her decision. The moving, eye-opening documentary based on this letter describes the anti-Jewish massacres in Eastern Europe following WWI — a tragedy that remains little known.

Co-producer/Director LeeAnn Dance will offer a talkback following the screening. An award winning television producer and groundbreaking investigative reporter, Dance has worked as a freelancer in East Africa and as a producer with CNN’s investigative and documentary unit. She now has her own boutique production company outside of Washington, D.C. “My Dear Children” is her first independent documentary.

Comics Scott Blakeman (Jewish) and Dean Obeidallah (Muslim) build bridges, promote tolerance and encourage conflict resolution with a disarmingly funny comedy show that’s been a hit at JCC’s, college campuses and theaters throughout the country and breaks new ground by finding common ground.

Don’t miss this incredible evening of laughter!

Contact Marylyn Haspel, Bookfest Director, with any questions at marylynh@charlestonjcc.org

This program sponsored in part by a generous allocation from the Charleston Jewish Federation